Religulous bill maher’s religion wolpe faith

The senior rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles targets the secular
reader and sets out to repudiate nonbeliever arguments.

“AS A critic,” declares Harold Bloom, “I have learned to rely upon
[Emerson’s] apprehension that our prayers are diseases of the will and
our creeds diseases of the intellect.”Thus did Emerson anticipate the
current public conversation about the role of faith in American life.
His point of view is nowadays embraced not only by Bloom but also by
such contemporary figures as Christopher Hitchens (“God Is Not
Great”), Richard Dawkins (“The God Delusion”), Sam Harris (“The End of
Faith”), Julia Sweeney (in her one-woman show “Letting Go of God”) and
the movie-making team of Bill Maher and Larry Charles in their
upcoming “Religulous.”

Now a new David has picked up sling and stone and taken aim at the
critics of religion. He is David J. Wolpe, senior rabbi of Sinai
Temple in Los Angeles and author of six previous books, including
“Making Loss Matter,” a book inspired by the health crises in his
family. (Wolpe and his wife are cancer survivors.) Wolpe, who recently
turned 50, is an articulate, credible and even endearing spokesman for
his cause — he was named the No. 1 pulpit rabbi in America by
Newsweek this year, and he is a frequent contributor to newspapers and
news broadcasts on the subject of religion. Wolpe is no Bible-thumper,
however, and here he is clearly not preaching to the pews. Indeed,
“Why Faith Matters” appears to be addressed to the secular reader and
sets out to repudiate the arguments of bestselling authors such as
Hitchens and Dawkins.

Significantly, Wolpe never calls on the reader to accept religion out
of true belief; rather, he asks us only to keep an open mind on the
subject. “I do not believe our choice is either an absence of God or
an over-zealous embrace of God,” he writes. “. . . All of our culture
is built on the assumption of free will; it is the teaching of great
religions that such will is God’s paradoxical gift to us — to do
good, or to do ill.” Personal crisis of faithThus, for example, Wolpe
recalls his own crisis of faith when, at age 12, he saw “Night and
Fog,” the Alain Resnais documentary about the Holocaust: “Spirit
suddenly drained from the world,” he writes. “Surely if there was a
God, this would not be permitted.” Although his father was a rabbi,
Wolpe became what he describes as “a strong, self-confident atheist in
a world of weak, credulous believers.” He returned to a belief in God
only when his adolescent self-confidence slackened and he entertained
the possibility that he might be wrong.Wolpe is a reader and a
thinker, and he cites the writings of Nietzsche and Gibbon and Sartre
as readily and as expertly as the Scriptures and, in fact,
considerably more often. He makes no strong assertions about what
religion is capable of revealing: “From its earliest days, religion
has taught that at the heart of everything is not a puzzle but a
mystery . . . ,” he declares. “Acceptance of mystery is an act not of
resignation but humility.” And he insists that the believer is
actually more willing than the nonbeliever to grapple with the
complexities of the world: “One can have simple faith, but faith is
not simple.” Wolpe considers and rejects the argument that religion is
a “misfired strategy of survival” dating to our cave-dwelling
ancestors, and he declares instead that religion has been, on balance,
a civilizing and elevating force in human history. “That everything
from the cathedral at Chartres to relief missions is a result of an
evolutionary misfiring is impossible to maintain,” writes Wolpe, thus
repudiating the argument of naysayers like Hitchens who are perfectly
willing to throw out the baby with the bath- water. Based on examples
ranging from the Crusades and the Inquisition to the horrors of 9/11,
he concedes that religious true belief can be deadly but notes that it
has also inspired people of faith to “live decently and to care for
others.” Indeed, he argues that religion has served to check the human
impulse toward violence, “although by a kind of ideological jujitsu,
it sometimes contributes to the very violence it seeks to tame.” In a
display of his own rhetorical jujitsu, Wolpe quotes no less an
authority on skepticism than Michael Shermer (“How We Believe”) for
the proposition that “for every one of these grand tragedies there are
ten thousand acts of personal kindness and social good that go
unreported.” Measuring faithWolpe always avoids over-claiming when it
comes to measuring what faith can accomplish. “Religion is neither an
answer to a question nor the solution to a problem,” he concedes. “It
is a response to the wonder of existence and a guide to life.” At
moments, he appears to be asking only that atheists become agnostics
rather than true believers: “Surely with a touch of imagination, and a
touch less arrogance, we can appreciate that there is much in this
world, its creation, governance and majesty, that we do not begin to
understand.” At its core, Wolpe’s argument is based on quality-of-life
considerations, an astute stance to take when addressing a readership
of nonbelievers. “Living with an awareness of the miraculous,” he
insists, “re-enchants the world.” He explains how he was comforted by
his faith during his life-threatening illness: “My prayer was not
answered because I lived,” he writes, “my prayer was answered because
I felt better able to cope with my sickness.” And he credits organized
religion with the same kind of social utility that we might otherwise
seek and find in a psychotherapist’s office or a 12-step program.
“Inside of every human being is a battle against the pettiness and
malice that thread through our character,” he observes. “That battle
is often lost, but religion, at the very least, knows that it must be
fought, and should be fought, each day of our lives.” Wolpe’s book
will surely find a more sympathetic readership among nonbelievers than
among many true believers. Some ultra-observant Jews, for example,
refuse to recognize his ordination as a Conservative rabbi, and some
Christian and Islamic fundamentalists will quickly consign him to
hell, not only because he is Jewish but because he is so open-minded
in matters of religion. In that sense, “Why Faith Matters” is a
profoundly ironic confession of faith. When Wolpe calls on us to keep
“an open heart to the testimonies of others,” he is appealing to a
core value that is wholly rejected by some of the most ardent
advocates of religion today. Jonathan Kirsch is the author of 12
books, including, most recently, “The Grand Inquisitor’s Manual: A
History of Terror in the Name of God.”

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Hills Post Office home for $7.9 million.

The religulous bill maher belief believe use

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“You can’t be a rational person six days of the week and put on a suit
and make rational decisions and go to work and, on one day of the
week, go to a building and think you’re drinking the blood of a 2,000
-year-old space god,” comedian and atheist Bill Maher said earlier
this year on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien.”

On the “Saturday Night Live” season debut last week, homeschooling
families were portrayed as fundamentalists with bad haircuts who fear
biology. Actor Matt Damon recently disparaged Sarah Palin by referring
to a transparently fake email that claimed she believed that dinosaurs
were Satan’s lizards. And according to prominent atheists like Richard
Dawkins, traditional religious belief is “dangerously irrational.”
From Hollywood to the academy, nonbelievers are convinced that a
decline in traditional religious belief would lead to a smarter, more
scientifically literate and even more civilized populace.

The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging
religion, won’t create a new group of intelligent, skeptical,
enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new
levels of mass superstition. And that’s not a conclusion to take on
faith — it’s what the empirical data tell us.

“What Americans Really Believe,” a comprehensive new study released by
Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion
greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm
readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the
irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations,
far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely
to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical
Christians.

The Gallup Organization, under contract to Baylor’s Institute for
Studies of Religion, asked American adults a series of questions to
gauge credulity. Do dreams foretell the future? Did ancient advanced
civilizations such as Atlantis exist? Can places be haunted? Is it
possible to communicate with the dead? Will creatures like Bigfoot and
the Loch Ness Monster someday be discovered by science?

The answers were added up to create an index of belief in occult and
the paranormal. While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong
belief in these things, only 8% of people who attend a house of
worship more than once a week did.

Even among Christians, there were disparities. While 36% of those
belonging to the United Church of Christ, Sen. Barack Obama’s former
denomination, expressed strong beliefs in the paranormal, only 14% of
those belonging to the Assemblies of God, Sarah Palin’s former
denomination, did. In fact, the more traditional and evangelical the
respondent, the less likely he was to believe in, for instance, the
possibility of communicating with people who are dead.

This is not a new finding. In his 1983 book “The Whys of a
Philosophical Scrivener,” skeptic and science writer Martin Gardner
cited the decline of traditional religious belief among the better
educated as one of the causes for an increase in pseudoscience, cults
and superstition. He referenced a 1980 study published in the magazine
Skeptical Inquirer that showed irreligious college students to be by
far the most likely to embrace paranormal beliefs, while born-again
Christian college students were the least likely.

Surprisingly, while increased church attendance and membership in a
conservative denomination has a powerful negative effect on paranormal
beliefs, higher education doesn’t. Two years ago two professors
published another study in Skeptical Inquirer showing that, while less
than one-quarter of college freshmen surveyed expressed a general
belief in such superstitions as ghosts, psychic healing, haunted
houses, demonic possession, clairvoyance and witches, the figure
jumped to 31% of college seniors and 34% of graduate students.

We can’t even count on self-described atheists to be strict
rationalists. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s
monumental “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey” that was issued in June,
21% of self-proclaimed atheists believe in either a personal God or an
impersonal force. Ten percent of atheists pray at least weekly and 12%
believe in heaven.

On Oct. 3, Mr. Maher debuts “Religulous,” his documentary that attacks
religious belief. He talks to Hasidic scholars, Jews for Jesus,
Muslims, polygamists, Satanists, creationists, and even Rael —
prophet of the Raelians — before telling viewers: “The plain fact is
religion must die for man to live.”

But it turns out that the late-night comic is no icon of rationality
himself. In fact, he is a fervent advocate of pseudoscience. The night
before his performance on Conan O’Brien, Mr. Maher told David
Letterman — a quintuple bypass survivor — to stop taking the pills
that his doctor had prescribed for him. He proudly stated that he
didn’t accept Western medicine. On his HBO show in 2005, Mr. Maher
said: “I don’t believe in vaccination. . . . Another theory that I
think is flawed, that we go by the Louis Pasteur [germ] theory.” He
has told CNN’s Larry King that he won’t take aspirin because he
believes it is lethal and that he doesn’t even believe the Salk
vaccine eradicated polio.

Anti-religionists such as Mr. Maher bring to mind the assertion of
G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown character that all atheists,
secularists, humanists and rationalists are susceptible to
superstition: “It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you
lose your common sense, and can’t see things as they are.”

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Religulous bill maher’s say it’s festival

My voice is still a bit shaky, PopWatchers, and my sleep schedule
remains all kinds of wackadoodle, but at least the remnants of Gustav
have finally (hopefully) pushed beyond the Ontario borders. That’s
right, the sun is shining bright on the Toronto International Film
Festival, which means I can at long last vlog outdoors! (Ooo. That
just sounds vaguely untoward, huh? It’s not, I promise.) So click on
to hear more about why I had to walk out of (starring Ben Kingsley and
21’s Jim Sturgess), what surprised Kevin Smith the most about Toronto,
what may be an advance look at a Religulous DVD extra courtesy Bill
Maher, and what some native Torontonians had to say about the film
festival that’s called their city home for over 30 years.

As a Torontonian who has been attending the festival for the last 8
years, I’d say that it definitely has changed. More star seekers, more
corporate and more expensive. But it’s still my favourite part of the
fall.

As to the celebrity question…I can’t imagine a case where I’d accost
someone on the street or stake out a hotel, but at the screenings
themselves I definitely grab my camera and take a picture or two.

First, let me comment on the obscene number of empty sponsor seats at
The Duchess gala premiere last night. What a waste. Dozens of people
would have loved to fill them. Secondly, I saw Religilous today and
LOVED IT! I haven’t laughed that hard in a while. (Wanted to post on
Bill Maher’s site but there’s nowhere to do that). Thank goodness for
people like Bill Maher who try to shake some common sense into the
general public and for exposing the ridiculousness of the belief
system. And it IS a system. Nice work, Bill!

Oh, Adam, Adam… Please learn fast because those vlogs are getting
hopeless. There’s potential, but most of us could probably get better
production value sitting at home filming ourselves with a cell phone.

If he did indeed give money to Obummer becase of a speech that the
next Vice President of the United States made, I have to ask if Billie
boy has a brain?

Isn’t it more scary that Obummer is as close to a Socialist that has
ever been running for president? Does he care that Obummer has Zero
experience (other than mimicking his preacher… oh yea that’s fine)
and changes his words (right in your face to Billy boy) to get the
vote?

Bill, I used to think you were funny and sharp. You blew it. I hope
that everyone boycotts your movie in October of this year. Since you
go with the buck, perhaps that will scare you more.

I couldn’t drag myself out of a Jim Sturgess movie if he was speaking
Klingon! Dude, REALLY.

The festival here in Toronto has definitely gotten a little out of
hand, but I think it’s chugging along at par with the rest of North
America’s celeb-obsessed culture, so it’s not really a surprise. It
was odd going to the see The Wrestler last night with tonnes of fans
lined up across the street, most likely with no clue about what they
were waiting for!

Yeah, I would probably check out all the celebrity happenings. But I
would also plan to go out and eat at a nearby restaurant, just to have
a legitimate excuse to be there.

My God! Is there any way you could possibly make watching these
“vlogs” any more boring!? Zero personality + nothing meaningful to say
= SNORE

ya need to hang out with more foreign english speakers to get to
understand them, I’m Irish and I live in Toronto and I hope people
understand me. I do find a big change here in TO with all the fuss, I
am a movie fanatic and it’s getting insane, I wouldn’t rush up to the
‘talent’ but thats just me, but the whole planet is celeb obsessive
now! I still wanna see the smaller movies, as I can see the
‘hollywood’ ones in a few weeks. I saw ‘Slum Dog Millionaire’ last
night and it was fantastic! best movie so far!

As an almost-native Torontian (I grew up in Mississauga, the city
immediately to Toronto’s west), and as one who had volunteered at the
festival for a few years, I can honestly say that, while I was
starstruck, I never approached any stars because I didn’t want to
bother them. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have any encounters, of course
–Emily Watson smiled at me, I was Farrah Fawcett’s seat holder, and
Brain de Palma even yelled at me–but I never initiated contact. The
only time I ever did that was with Ally Sheedy, and that’s because it
was my job at the time.

Bad Adam! That Word is officially verboten. Okay, let’s make a
deal…you don’t say That Word and I will stop using “verboten”. LOL

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The religulous bill maher religion maher film

TORONTO (AFP) — Sure to irk US evangelicals, Muslims and
Hasidic Jews alike, satirist Bill Maher aims to subvert what he claims
is mankind’s biggest threat: organized religion.

Maher, 52, was born and raised Catholic, but says he gave up on
religion as a young man.

“Religion is the ultimate taboo, and the one in most need of
debunking,” he told reporters at the premiere of Larry Charles’s film
“Religulous” at the Toronto film festival this week.

“A world without religion is clearly a lot safer than a world with
it,” echoed Charles, who previously directed “Borat: Cultural
Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”
(2006).

“We don’t want to just debunk (organized religion), we want to destroy
the whole system,” he said.

In the film, Maher — best known for his hit US television show
“Politically Incorrect” — travels to Jerusalem, Vatican City and Salt
Lake City to interview locals about their faith in God, asking
polarizing and unsettling questions about God and religion.

It dashes from the serious, such as why bad things happen to good
people, to the silly: what’s with all the beards?

Religulous bill maher’s site welcome views

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This month, Bill Maher delivers more fire and brimstone — and laughs
— with the release of , his pontification on the absurdity of
organized religion. Here, the cheeky devil exorcises his demons with
his list of top ten things that bug him. 1. The “too cool to
dance in the aisles” people who stay seated during Mamma Mia! 2.
When the Jacuzzi jets fill your trunks with air and make your ass
float to the surface.

3. Murder-mystery dinner theater. Who’s the real killer? My vote
goes to whoever made the Chicken Kiev.

4. Hitchhikers who start blubbering and yanking at the door handle
when you turn down the dirt road.

5. When the ad in the newspaper says, “Come out and meet the
Jonas Brothers,” and you drive all the way to a mall in Pacoima
only to find you don’t really get to “meet” the
Jonas Brothers, you just get to watch them perform three songs.

7. Employees who greet you the second you enter their store:
“Welcome to Hollywood Video!” You really want to make me
feel welcome? Add a porn section.

8. Rude reporters who expect an interview while you’re trying to
get laid. Yes, I mean you, Dateline NBC’s Chris Hansen.

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profile.

Maher religion holy in religulous bill maher

TORONTO — “Just call us the Woodward and Bernstein of religion.”
That’s how Bill Maher sums his quest with “Borat” director Larry
Charles in “Religulous,” a pithy, smart, and usually profane poke at
religion.

From the Holy Land to the Holy Land Experience theme park in Florida,
Maher travels the globe searching out believers and engages them on
their turf about what they believe and why.

That confrontation between the faithful and Maher’s logic makes this
documentary a little like Prince Judah going after the Roman heathen
Messala in “Ben-Hur” — without the showy chariot race.

“All I can say is religion won’t go the way of the button shoe,” Maher
joked with reporters at the Toronto International Film Festival.

“Oh I still found myself bargaining with this guy in my head at times
when I was trouble,” he laughs. “But no, I’m not for this disease that
religion has turned out to be.”

Confronting the faithful as Bill does is funny stuff. With his logic
in hand, Maher goes forth and finds a Jesus impersonater who explains
the Holy Trinity to Maher by comparing it to the three states of
water.

He unearths tourists in the gift shop at The Holy Land Experience who
nosh back and forth with him about the place of the Jews in heaven.
Add to that the everyday American Christians Maher takes on who
“believe in believing” because “what if you died without faith and
found out you were wrong?”

It all sounds like flimsy crap to Maher, especially when he’s talking
to self-styled religious leaders, Catholic higher-ups dressed in un-
Godly expensive suits and bible-thumping fundamentalists like Arkansas
Senator Mark Pryor.

Maher’s approach is fair. He listens to what everyone has to say and
thoughtfully considers every word. Then Maher goes for the jugular.

“How can you believe in a talking snake?” he asks. How can a man live
in the belly of a whale or come back from the dead? And what about
those Mormons? How can they believe that God is some real super-dude
happily residing on another planet?”

From the stormy religious opinions he finds in Jerusalem to the
radical Muslim problem in Amsterdam, Maher’s quest for “truth”
presents a force behind faith that he and Charles would unquestionably
call frightening.

“My country is dumber than your is,” Maher quipped before the Canadian
press. “Only in America will you find politicians in a presidential
campaign trying to out-love Jesus.”

Some may vehemently disagree with such commentary from a man sporting
a ZZ Top beard and a pair of lavender Crocs dangling from his feet.
But so what? Taking a little heat is worth it to these two anti-heaven
crusaders.

“Religulous” won’t appeal to people who loved “The Passion of the
Christ,” the 2004 movie that made devout Catholic director Mel Gibson
richer than God. As Maher says, “We’re giving those who value science
and reason above myth another alternative at the movies.”

Whether “Religulous” changes peoples’ minds as America gears up for a
presidential election has yet to be seen.

“I don’t know how much this film will sway voters. But I’ll tell you.
When Sarah Palin got onto the Republican ticket with John McCain I was
swayed to write a big check to Obama,” Maher jokes.

“I watched a lot of documentaries before I got Larry to sign on. It
was all so depressing to watch,” Maher laughs.

The religulous bill maher maher shepherd defamer.com

After Bill Maher sat down with TV Guide last month to ) film, the
controversial, religion-debunking Religulous. Would sparks fly?

Lord, yes. Things came to a head at the end of Maher’s segment, when
Shepherd asked the skeptical Maher whether he had ever spoken with
God. Needless to say, he had not, and when Shepherd replied that she
had, Maher recommended a stint in Bellevue. As Whoopi Goldberg
hurriedly threw the show to commercial, a grinning Elisabeth
Hasselbeck clearly exulted in the fact that for once, she wasn’t the
controversial one. Who needs a now, eh, Babs?

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Maher religulous god in religulous bill maher

Bill Maher Makes an Adolescent Case Against Religion in Religulous;
Muslim Comics Play It Safe in Allah Made Me Funny

Religulous Directed by Larry Charles Lionsgate Films Opens October 1
Allah Made Me Funny Directed by Andrea Kalin Truly Indie Opens October
3

Redolent of Roman decadence and authority gone mad, the title
Religulous rolls pleasingly off the tongue. But Bill Maher’s one-man
stand-up attack on religious fundamentalism is a dog that has more
bark than bite—a skeptical, secular-humanist hounding of the
hypocrites, amusingly annotated with sarcastic subtitles and clips
from cheesy biblical spectacles.

Initially quite funny in its head-on engagement with star-spangled,
self-righteous platitudes, Religulous is one small career move for the
left-libertarian tele-savant Maher and another, equally modest step
toward confronting the migraine-inducing, theocratic With God On Our
Side nonsense that defines much American political
discourse—John McCain gets a cameo insisting that “the
Constitution established the United States as a Christian country,”
but he’s hardly the only public figure out to sever the U.S. from its
Enlightenment roots.

Religulous opens with Maher in Israel at fundamentalist ground zero,
reporting from Megiddo, the designated spot for the Battle of
Armageddon. By way of an alternative vision of the apocalypse, the
movie breaks into a comic montage juxtaposing all manner of holy men,
true believers, and pious pols—then licenses the comedian to
spend the rest of its 101 minutes turning his blunderbuss on this
barrel of fish.

For some, Religulous might seem to articulate what has been imagined
as Hollywood’s secret agenda since the 1920s: Is nothing sacred to
these heathens? Maher, who explains that he was brought up Catholic by
a non-observant Jewish mother (dragged on camera to proclaim: “Every
family is dysfunctional”), seems unambiguously alienated from cosmic
consciousness. Recalling his boyhood, he says that God “wasn’t
relevant to my life—Superman was relevant” and maintains that he
would have worshipped any deity that let him jerk off. (The latter is
counterintuitive to the max: Radical psychotherapist Wilhelm Reich
theorized that it was precisely to keep kids from masturbating that
humanity invented the notion of an invisible, all-seeing God.)

Although his antics are directed by Borat showman Larry Charles, Maher
is hardly comparable to Sacha Baron Cohen as a trickster performance
artist. (His funniest act in Religulous is a brief stint, big glasses
on and ear-flaps down, preaching Scientology in Hyde Park, London. A
few minutes into his rant, a bystander steps out of the crowd and
crowns him King Ding-a-Ling, solemnly placing a garland of balloons on
his fevered brow.) Nor is Maher a swashbuckling provocateur like
Michael Moore, comforting the afflicted and confronting the infidels
with his intimidating bulk. Mainly, Maher is pleased to play devil’s
advocate; occasionally, he presents himself as celebrity Antichrist.

On a road trip through rural North Carolina, Maher and his unseen
entourage pause at a tiny truck-stop chapel for some good-natured
joshing with the congregation. Whereas religion sells “an invisible
product,” Maher explains to them, he’s peddling doubt. Sensing what’s
to come, one believer angrily makes for the door. Maher is always
pleased to challenge, debate, and laugh at the lumpen faithful,
willing as they are to cite “historical facts” to defend any position.
Still, as a polemicist, he’s hardly fair—more than a few
exchanges are recalibrated in the editing, and too many end with Maher
flipping Pascal’s Wager, rejoining a believer’s “What if you’re
wrong?” with an emphatic “What if you’re wrong?”

Such one-sided encounters are more depressing than fun. As a showbiz
wise guy, Maher is more effective when hanging with more public
personalities. He gets a dapper soul singer turned preacher to insist
that “Jesus [also] dressed very well!” and then go on to mangle
Matthew 19:24 (“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”). He
maneuvers Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas into accepting the premise
that religion is a remnant of the Bronze Age; unperturbed, Pryor
defends his beliefs by lamely pointing out that “you don’t have to
pass an IQ test to be in the Senate.” Maher confounds tourists and an
unhappy public-relations woman in Orlando’s Holy Land theme park by
engaging the star-struck actor who plays Jesus in a theological
debate.

These straw men are Maher’s more formidable opponents. It’s far less
enjoyable to watch him bait an anti-Zionist Hasid, a barely coherent
Scottish Muslim, a guy who claims to be a descendant of Jesus, the
proprietor of a creationist museum of natural history, or a Dutch
pothead who runs a “cannabis ministry.” The last half of the movie is
more or less spent with the freaks on the carnival midway in
preparation for Maher’s big spiel. Throwing his own brand of snake oil
on the fire, he insists that faith makes a virtue of stupidity,
identifies religion as dangerous because it encourages people to
believe they have all the answers, and warns the world to “grow up or
die.”

Heavy stuff. Freud, who devoted his life to the study of irrational
behavior and characterized religion as humanity’s “universal
obsessional neurosis,” concluded The Future of an Illusion on a
wistful note—arguing pragmatic, imperfect scientific thinking as
the only alternative to the delusional totality of religious faith.
Maher more or less short-circuits this line of thought with a fire-
and-brimstone crescendo of exploding nuclear bombs and a chorus of the
Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere.” The anthem isn’t inappropriate:
Religulous doesn’t really go anywhere either. It’s ultimately a
celebration of the old-time religion we call entertainment.

From the multiplex to the stump: It’s caped crusader versus community
organizer, and the end is nigh

Jesus is the Door no sinning people will be allowed in Gods Kingdom
no homosex people ,lairs murderers,, thieves… no talk show hosts
who sin.,.no false christans repent! openairpreacher utube

Bill does have his considerable moments, but all the advance on his
latest diatribe points out his hit-and-run weakness; until he truly
dives into the subject, he’ll never be considered a real trend setter
or opinion leader. The easy “talking snake” and “guy living in a
whale” have been around for decades (centuries?). There is a lot more
meat (so long as it isn’t Friday) to chew on regarding the “Big Three”
other than just the fairy tale aspects of their collective story
books. I like the movie concept, will see the flick and save final
judgment for later; but it looks like a back alley quicky than a real
passionate screw.

I am a great beleiver in God, but I have to say I really like what
Maher is doing. He, in his movies and overall lfe isn’t questioniong
God but us, and the way we beleive and how we show those beleifs. You
manage in your article to loose a lot of people who would agree with
you. Some of you religious types don’t get that you must write for the
everyman as the Bible is written. Not to prove you’ve had a great
education of man by man and have good use of words.You guys have to
stop overeducating us of god and start educating us in and with God.

The religulous trailer film films docs

I’ve beaten this horse silly, but I have to bring this up again, every
fall when I am inundated with terrific documentaries thanks to the
proliferation of film festivals, fall film bookings, cable outlets
that air docs, people who use film to espouse a political cause,
agenda-driven films and the like. Thanks to cheap, super quality
cameras and editing software and film programs that often start in
high school, America is awash in great documentary films. In recent
weeks, I’ve seen works on the dying art of county fair stunt drivers
(Hell Drivers), the fading cowboy world of the sandhills of Florida
(Cracker), a personal doc intended for a baby whose demented mom
murdered his dad (Dear Zachary), a fellow who took the life lived by
the Into the Wild kid, Chris McCandless, to heart (The Calling), and
more political fare than you can shake a campaign sign at.
Here’s the trailer to the terrific Finding Our Voices, narrated by
Martin Sheen (natch!), one of the better political dissent docs of the
fall.

Bill Maher’s scathing Religulous is coming to theaters in October,
Dear Zachary (very moving, sad) by the end of the year.

The are the main venues for a lot of these films making their way to
O-Town. Global Peace is all about the docs, this year, from an
intimate AIDS education in NYC story (All of Us), to a PBS piece
(American Idealist: The Story of Sargeant Shriver), an apolitical can-
do bunch of vets feeding and caring for refugees trapped in war zones
(Beyond the Call) and the chilling election-stealing doc, Uncounted:
The New Math of American Elections. More about their films next week.

Let’s hope the Orlando Film Festival matches Global Peace for quality
and that they further remedy the paucity of docs that make it to local
screens.

The religulous trailer film political films

It was interesting to be in Canada for the Toronto International Film
Festival and see media coverage there of events happening here.

Both political conventions (and Hurricane Gustav) filled the news and
opinion pages of all the Canadian papers with the bulk of the coverage
tilted in favor of Obama, but with a spirited rebuttal from readers
and columnists alike.

The announcement of their own elections stole the spotlight from all
this, and shame on me for not caring enough to pay attention.

Back home, the relief I sought in the sports pages from the U.S.
media’s obsession with political minutiae and trivia was as short
lived as Milwaukee Brewer’s wild card hopes.

And now I find that escapism in film entertainment is also futile,
because the multiplex is as polarized as the rest of the country.

People turned to political films during the last election for
information that was often not reported anywhere else. And one of
those films – “Fahrenheit 9/11” by Michael Moore – became the highest
grossing documentary of all time.

It was written and directed by Shorewood native David Zucker, who
directed “The Naked Gun” and “Airplane!,” and stars Kevin Farley – the
late Chris Farley’s brother – as Moore.

“An American Carol” was funded by Beloit resident Diane Kendricks and
her late husband Ken Hendricks. In the film Farley’s character is
visited by several historical characters – ala Charles Dickens – when
he proposes banning July 4.

The Hendrickses are investors in the production firm founded by
Stephen McEveety, producer of Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart,” “The Passion
of the Christ” and “What Women Want.” A release said the firm
specializes in “high impact, socially relevant films.”

The Hendrickses are also major supporters of the Beloit Film Festival
and McEveety has been named honorary chair of the 2009 event.

Bill Maher, of course, comes from the polar opposite viewpoint, and
his new documentary is the anti-“The Passion of the Christ.”

The comic and HBO talk show host is a caustic and outspoken liberal
and his film – by “Borat” director Larry Charles – disputes the
notions of God and faith and ridicules the sorts of extreme elements
like ganja worshippers and Scientologists, that gather in his name.

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